Guarana: live compilation restored

A compilation of live tracks from Guarana is the latest playlist to be restored and added to our collection over at SoundCloud. We have attempted to arrange the songs into the order that the band might have performed them in a live set.

Guarana were the masters of funk rock and had a huge live sound with Danny’s cunning usage of inventive open-string chords. They found themselves exiles in Exeter after leaving Guernsey to conquer the north island.

These versions may not have the polish and finesse that the majority of their performances had, but they certainly give a flavour of the sound and feel of the band. You can hear how wonderful their songs were and appreciate the craft of their songwriting creativity. There are not many bands that write even one song that will make all the hairs on your back stand on end, but Guarana had many of them in their repertoire.

We are not sure exactly how these recordings were made but we believe they all come from the same show and that they came straight off the desk as the bass is a bit quiet, the guitar sounds a bit dead, the vocal is a touch loud and the kick drum has a few rather eyebrow-raisingly high peaks.

We remember Danny le Pelley was the jovial, amiable singer, guitarist and frontman of the band, but unfortunately we don’t even know the names of Guarana‘s bass player and drummer. Their bass player had some rather impressive dreadlocks and played a beautiful Warwick bass, and their drummer may have been Asian and played with great style and accuracy.

Guarana used to have a tall French guy accompany them to all of their gigs with a video camera, so somewhere out in the universe there will be a lot of footage of their live shows. We would love to host more of their work, so if anybody has any more Guarana material, including sound recordings, photos or videos, we would love to hear from you.

Danny very kindly gave us a couple of CDs of Guarana back in 2002 whilst we were in the throws of trying to finalise Flicker‘s album At Least 1000 Words. There is a little more material from those recordings that we will be able to bring you at some point in the coming weeks. Developments on the above fronts will be relayed to fans via our News service and on Twitter.

If you would like to listen to Guarana: Live! here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

If you would prefer to listen over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.